Developing an ear.

I use the tool as an aide not as an absolute. So in other words as long as
the chanter notes are not far out I can live with it, but at least I know

they are slightly out. I can set up a chanter reed in several minutes
without messing around all day. I can balance drone reeds quickly, which
provides more practice time. Are my reeds 100% accurate, no, but there are
pretty close and stable which is no worse than those who continually mess
around with tuning drones that have gone off during playing a tune. So I am
happy with my investment and would recommend it to all bands and individual
players who are trying to develop their ‘ear’ whilst maximising their
playing time. For those who have a developed ear they need not invest,
however, in my experience everyone’s ear is unique and perfect which is why
so many low grade band’s sound so bad!

I am now developing a comfort zone around tempo, which means different
things to different people-per tune. I know I play too fast on some tunes
and want to get this under control. This is why the HBT2 is so valuable, but
once, again the old soldiers in the band all know the right tempo for every
tune, which is different for each one of them, and I get a little irritated
having to listen to each war story for the third or fourth time.

Having got off my chest all my irritations around band playing! I can focus
on the Metronome.
Yes I have worked out how to change tempo and time signatures, but there are
a few things which I felt I might be missing out on: such as the notation
types showing on the screen, and what difference the time signatures
actually make when all I’m looking for is BPM. I have tried to assess the
‘professionals’ BPM on YouTube and come up with a band width of similarity
for most of them, so my sense is some of the graphics on the HBT2 screen are
more for show than actual benefit?

None the less its great to have this feature that I am only now realising
the benefit of.